Gaspard and Lisa at the Museum (Gaspard and Lisa Books)

The Misadventures of Gaspard and Lisa series continues with an exciting class field trip to the Museum of Natural History. Gaspard and Lisa decide to play a joke on their classmates by becoming part of the exhibit. Their plan works perfectly, so perfectly that when the museum closes for the night, guess who are locked in?

Gaspard and Lisa try not to turn adventures into misadventures, but it's hard. Especially when the whole class gets to go on an exciting field trip to the Museum of Natural History. What wonders lie within! A whale skeleton, monkeys, and dinosaurs thrill the students, but the exhibit of extinct animals is the most exciting of all. When their classmates make a silly joke about the two friends looking like extinct animals (they are dogs; the classmates are human), the cunning canines decide to gently retaliate. They hop into the extinct animal exhibit themselves, making small signs--"very rare animal (white)" and "very rare animal (black)"--and freezing like statues in the display. Their ruse is a success! Or is it? Anne Gutman and Georg Hallensleben's Gaspard and Lisa books are all very slight stories, but with such quiet, charming details and unbearably cute (yet gorgeous) illustrations that they completely charm our socks off. Don't miss another favorite in the series, Lisa's Airplane Trip. (Ages 2 to 6) --Karin Snelson